STEVEN (cont’d)
Yeah just try not to look around and be, like, realizing like, oh shit, I’m alone-alone. Just always be, like, WITH someone else, like a pardner-pardner, not like a friend-pardner. No, you want to stay with a pardner-person, not like a friend-pardner-person. Have a team-pardner-person. Tackle problems-pardner-person, pardner-problems. Celebrate problems-pardner-person, pardner-problems. Support-pardner-person. Listen-pardner-person. Laugh-pardner-person. Adjust-pardner-person. Person-person stuff, pardner-person stuff. Pardner stuff. Be WITH one yeah. I’ve said what I meant.

STARA
Oh okay okay. I am going to go wash up now. Thanks, dad.

STEVEN
Kay. But, water is limited here.

STARA
Oh okay.

Stara leaves.

Stell enters.

STEVEN
She’s, uh, not doing so good.

STELL
Why? She’s fine. She’s going to be juuhst fine. I have the UTmost confidence in her.

STEVEN
Heartbreak, she says.

STELL
Oh, shit. Why?

STEVEN
I don’t know. She just says, “heartbreak, what to do about that”?

ARIEL STESS is a Brooklyn-based playwright originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work has been developed, presented, or supported by Playwrights Horizons, Mabou Mines, New Georges, Clubbed Thumb, The Lark, The Bushwick Starr, Catch, Little Theatre, Prelude, and Dixon Place. Ariel was a 2013-14 New Georges Audrey Resident and a 2014 resident artist at Mabou Mines. Ariel is a member of The Falcons Writers Group and Bookshop Workshops Writers Group, and is under commission from Playwrights Horizons. Her play I’m Pretty Fucked Up premiered in Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks 2014. She holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College.www.arielstess.com

I guess in some ancient models the masculine is the sky and the earth is the feminine, the fertile. But in this, it’s not exactly like that, if anything the masculine lover is the one that comes from underneath.